


Ordinary

by myticanlegends



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Asexual Henry Cheng, Asexuality, Character Study, honestly who knows - Freeform, its basically just Henry Cheng
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myticanlegends/pseuds/myticanlegends
Summary: Henry Cheng likes to believe that there is no such thing as unordinary or extraordinary people. People are ordinary in that everyone is their own combination of traits and characteristics. If everyone is extraordinary, then that extraordinary becomes ordinary. But he also believes that there are some things in the world beyond comprehension. That strange things can happen, that may sometimes only occur to one person in the entire world, and that the world is the one full of extraordinary experiences and things.





	Ordinary

Henry Cheng likes to believe that there is no such thing as unordinary or extraordinary people. People are ordinary in that everyone is their own combination of traits and characteristics. If everyone is extraordinary, then that extraordinary becomes ordinary. But he also believes that there are some things in the world beyond comprehension. That strange things can happen, that may sometimes only occur to one person in the entire world, and that the world is the one full of extraordinary experiences and things.

He would like to believe that he is an ordinary person to whom many extraordinary things have happened. He can’t say that his life has been normal.

His childhood begins like this:

Henry Cheng was eight years old when someone first attempted kidnapping him.

They did not succeed but this is how he learns that his family is different.

His mother is a powerful person, he learns. People want to hurt powerful people. They do not like people more powerful than themselves, and in order to bring them down, they will try to steal what is most precious to them.

What is most precious to his mother is Henry.

She gives him a robotic bee for protection but when he is ten, they try again. This time it works. What could a bee have done to help him?

As it turns out, RoboBee was able to alert his mother to the situation, but it cannot actually get help.

He waited five days for her to show up. Five days of sitting in a literal hole, trapped, and nothing to do but listen to the kidnappers talk on the other side the closed door. They often got frustrated with the lack of progress. Henry waited for the moment they might come through the door and get it over with. Shoot him. Do something. Use him as leverage to escape.

It took five days of uneven breath, screaming, and tears until he was finally traded home. His mother wrapped his shaking body up in a blanket, fed him his favorite Korean drink, and told him that he could tell no one at school what had happened.

She gives him a counselor but the counselor is unable to answer why it took so long for his mother to save him when RoboBee had alerted her right away. His mother tells him it was to stop him from being kidnapped, or any other attempts, ever again.

It still hurts.

Growing up begins like this:

Henry has learned how to fit in. He is a chameleon who can pretend that maybe being locked in small rooms won’t bring him panic attacks or that he doesn’t still dream of the voices on the other side of the door. He’s gotten the hang of school now, or at least as much as someone in middle school can have, and he’s got friends.

But then his friends start talking about girls. Which is all well and good because girls are pretty and everything but like… Henry doesn’t get it. And he’s not an idiot, he knows that being gay is a thing, and honestly he could be because boys are pretty too. But that doesn’t make sense either.

He just simply is.

And when his friends describe a girl as hot, he understands what they mean, but he doesn’t relate to it. So like everything he’s done in his life up until this point, he pretends. He pretends that he gets it, that he has this extra desire towards wanting to be with someone, and in the end people just assume that he’s a private guy. They think he’s not vocalizing his interest in people, or call him gay, but really he’s hiding that he’s not like anyone at all.

It ends like this:

Henry Cheng is a boy who can never appear the same on the outside as he is on the inside. He’s got a lifetime of secrets dwelling inside that he’s managed to collect over the years.

He’s managed to be one of the most popular boy in school.

There are ways of expressing himself, he learns, without actually touching on anything he doesn’t want seen. His childhood trauma and continued unknown sexuality aside, he’s cultivated an image that he’s proud of. His hair is a masterpiece, he flaunts his favorite k-pop as well as his favorite 80s jams, and he engages with the news and local politics loudly and unabashedly. He is both himself and not himself at the same time.

But when he is alone, he is always back to where he started.

Sometimes he imagines who he could have been if his parents had a normal job. Or if he had been kidnapped and trained to be suspicious at a young age. Or if he had just been attracted to people other than simply enjoying the idea of humanity and not the physical relationships surrounding it. But Henry is who he is, he is normal, even if his experiences are not.

He senses the same dark chasms of secrets and mystery in Richard Gansey III. Something has happened to him that he can’t forget either. It’s in his passion towards the unknown and the pleasant masks he wears around all but friends. And his friends are the same way. Ronan Lynch tattoos his tragedy right on his back to warn everyone away and Adam Parrish wears it in his diluted accent and exhausted posture. Even Blue Sargent has a mystery to her, in her biting words and patchwork clothes just asking to be solved. For all Henry knows, it was that strangeness that drew them all together.

He desperately wants to be a part of them.

He has been this image of himself for so long that he doesn’t know how to drop the facade.

In a way, Henry is right. The world is full of extraordinary things. There are demons, and sleeping kings, and psychics. There’s a magical forest that is willing to sacrifice itself for a life, and ghosts who can change the past but stand in the present, and strangely enough, true love.

But the world is also full of terrible things.

Terrible things are that Gansey dies. Terrible things are that Blue was the one who had to kill him. Terrible things are Ronan being unmade with black goo slipping out of his ears, or Adam reaching out to kill because his arms are no longer his own, or Noah slipping away as if he was never even there. The terrible thing is that sometimes the world demands sacrifice and ordinary people, with extraordinary circumstances, have to provide them.

He is also wrong. Because extraordinary people exist beyond the complexities of what he considers normal. Ronan can pull objects from dreams, Adam can communicate to the magical forest, Blue is cursed and part tree, and somehow Gansey can speak things to life. It makes him wonder how many other extraordinary people there are in the world and if they’re drawn towards each other with this purpose - this magic that connects them all.

Henry had only just made friends with them when they slipped into chaos.

Maybe it makes that new friendship stronger. It’s almost like that night had been a dark initiation that suggested that if he survived the worst, and everything going wrong when it shouldn’t have, than he must have somehow belonged to their twisted tragedy. Henry already knows what it is like to experience suffering.

If anything, Henry thought he might have understood his mother a bit more now. She had sacrificed something as well in those five days she had been missing. Sometimes something bad has to happen, in order for it to never happen again.

Gansey understands as well. His anxiety. He too relives his worst moments in times of fear and they both can get through it together.

Everyone pairs off. Gansey finally gets to date Blue, Ronan and Adam are a _thing_ apparently, which Henry observes with a strange blend of being both surprised and not at all. As the new fifth member, after Noah has disappeared to where he always should have been, Henryhas no one.

He thinks maybe the Vancouver crowd thinks he’s got a crush on Blue. Or Gansey. Or even both. But as amazing as they both are, there’s still nothing. He’s never changed in that regard. He never will.

Poor Gansey tries to set him up once and when everything around this group is already so weird, Henry throws all caution to the wind and explains. People are pretty. But he’s never had any interest beyond that.

Before Gansey can open his mouth, looking confused, Blue interrupts with a, “Makes sense.”

“Never?” Gansey slips out.

“Never.” Henry verifies.

Blue rolls her eyes. “God, Gansey, it’s a perfectly ordinary thing.”

And it is.

Even if nothing else in their life is anymore, it’s a perfectly ordinary thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know what this is either folks. I found it in my wips when I was looking for something to finish. This isn’t even a story, more of my story-formatted musing and hopes.
> 
> It is important to me to have some sort of asexual representation and Henry is easy to headcanon as such. I really REALLY hope he actually is ace. Maybe a mention in the new series? Who knows. But if not canon, I have this fic.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and opinions on Henry Cheng would be much appreciated!


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